Conti's Attack Against Costa Rica Sparks a New Ransomware Era

A pair of ransomware attacks crippled parts of the country—and rewrote the rules of cybercrime.

For the last two months, Costa Rica has been under siege. Two major ransomware attacks have crippled many of the country’s essential services, plunging the government into chaos as it scrambles to respond. Officials say that international trade ground to a halt as the ransomware took hold and more than 30,000 medical appointments have been rescheduled, while tax payments have also been disrupted. Millions have been lost due to the attacks, and staff at affected organizations have turned to pen and paper to get things done.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FBI, CISA warn US hospitals of targeted BlackCat ransomware attacks

Image
By Sergiu Gatlan,  Bleeping Computer Today, the FBI, CISA, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) warned U.S. healthcare organizations of targeted ALPHV/Blackcat ransomware attacks. "ALPHV Blackcat affiliates have been observed primarily targeting the healthcare sector," the joint advisory cautions. Today's warning follows an April 2022 FBI flash alert and another advisory issued in December 2023 detailing the BlackCat cybercrime gang's activity since it surfaced in November 2021 as a suspected rebrand of the DarkSide and BlackMatter ransomware groups. The FBI linked BlackCat to over 60 breaches during its first four months of activity (between November 2021 and March 2022) and said the gang has raked in at least $300 million in ransoms from over 1,000 victims until September 2023. "Since mid-December 2023, of the nearly 70 leaked victims, the healthcare sector has been the most commonly victimized," the three federal agencies warned in today...
Read more

Nissan North America data breach impacts over 53,000 employees

Image
By Bill Toulas,  Bleeping Computer Nissan North America (Nissan) suffered a data breach last year when a threat actor targeted the company's external VPN and shut down systems to receive a ransom. The car maker discovered the breach in early November 2023 and discovered recently that the incident exposed personal data belonging to more than 53,000 current and former employees. “As shared during the Nissan Town Hall meeting on December 5, 2023, Nissan learned on November 7, 2023, that it was the victim of a targeted cyberattack. Upon learning of the attack, Nissan promptly notified law enforcement and began taking immediate actions to investigate, contain, and successfully terminate the threat,” the company said in a notification to impacted individuals. Nissan disclosed that the threat actor targeted its external VPN and then shut down certain company systems before asking for a ransom. The company notes that none of its systems were encrypted during the attack. Working with extern...
Read more

Why Your VPN May Not Be As Secure As It Claims

Image
By Krebs On Security Virtual private networking (VPN) companies market their services as a way to prevent anyone from snooping on your Internet usage. But new research suggests this is a dangerous assumption when connecting to a VPN via an untrusted network, because attackers on the same network could force a target’s traffic off of the protection provided by their VPN without triggering any alerts to the user. When a device initially tries to connect to a network, it broadcasts a message to the entire local network stating that it is requesting an Internet address. Normally, the only system on the network that notices this request and replies is the router responsible for managing the network to which the user is trying to connect. The machine on a network responsible for fielding these requests is called a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, which will issue time-based leases for IP addresses. The DHCP server also takes care of setting a specific local address — known ...
Read more